American cyclist Lael Wilcox is claiming the record for the fastest woman to bike around the world.
The 38-year-old started her journey in Chicago on May 26 and ended it in Chicago on Sept. 11, riding 18,125 miles over the course of 108 days, 12 hours and 12 minutes.
“I’ve just been on a total high,” Wilcox told All Things Considered. “From three days out from the finish, I just got this feeling like, ‘I can do this,’ and I felt like I was flying. And I’m still kind of riding that wave. I just had so much fun out there, and it meant so much to me. And, you know, it also felt so good to be coming to the end of it.”
Her record has yet to be certified by Guinness World Records, but it would beat by more than two weeks the previous record of 124 days and 11 hours set by Scottish cyclist Jenny Graham in 2018.
Wilcox’s first leg of the trip was a week riding from Chicago to New York City. Then she flew to Portugal, spending a month riding east through Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia.
Next it was a flight to Australia, where she spent about another month traveling from Perth to Brisbane. Then she spent a week biking through New Zealand, and afterward it was back to North America. She landed in Alaska and rode from Anchorage through western Canada and down the U.S. West Coast, before heading east through the Southwest and back to Chicago.
Riding 18,125 miles over nearly 109 days means averaging over 166 miles a day. Sometimes she rode more than 200.
And the world is not flat. Wilcox climbed a total of 629,880 vertical feet on her bike — equivalent to scaling the height of Mount Everest more than 21 times.
Guinness World Records does not require cyclists to literally ride the complete globe, as oceans would make that difficult (though perhaps not impossible). The requirements call for at least 18,000 miles of bicycling and for riders to cross two antipodal points — in Wilcox’s case, Madrid, Spain, and Wellington, New Zealand. Riders also have to take commercial transportation when they cross oceans — no private jets.
Wilcox is used to grueling ultradistance cycling
Wilcox is no stranger to long bike rides. She has been doing ultradistance racing since 2015, when she set the women’s record (15 days, 10 hours and 59 minutes) in the Tour Divide race, which runs from Banff, in the Canadian province of Alberta, all the way to the U.S.-Mexico border in Antelope Wells, New Mexico. She holds the women’s record in the Trans Am Bike Race across the U.S., and in 2016 she became the first woman and first American to win that grueling race from Oregon to Virginia, finishing in just over 18 days.
This time, she knew it was going to be a “pretty exhausting endeavor,” she told NPR. That’s why she invited fellow cyclists to ride along with her each day. Well-wishers also camped out along her route, offering drinks and treats.
Thousands of people came out along the way, she said.
“I’d be through a super-remote stretch like British Columbia where, you know, there’s maybe a gas station every 150 miles and there’s nobody out there. I saw, like, eight bears. And then I get closer to a town, and all of a sudden people start showing up, you know — a family with two kids and another guy that brought me a pastry and a nurse coming out in her full scrubs with the stethoscope just to say hello, or a construction guy that knew I was riding.”
Wilcox’s wife, photojournalist Rugile Kaladyte, documented the journey with extensive photos and videos and was part of a podcast of nightly updates. Wilcox adds that she’s grateful they “got to have this life experience together.”
Guinness World Records told NPR that it has received an application for Wilcox’s record attempt and that its certification process can take 12 to 15 weeks.
When NPR talked with her shortly after she made it to Chicago, Wilcox was busy — on a bike ride with her family. “There’s nothing else I’d rather do,” she said.
Transcript:
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
After traveling more than 18,000 miles across three continents and through both hemispheres, Lael Wilcox is back home.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LAEL WILCOX: Hi, NPR. It’s Lael, and I’m about to finish my ride around the world and break the record.
DETROW: We caught up with Wilcox over the phone on the final leg of the bicycle trip.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WILCOX: I’m feeling incredible. I’m on Day 108. I’ve ridden, I think, 18,100 miles, and I have 50 to go, so the home stretch. I’m almost back to Chicago. And it’s incredible.
DETROW: Lael Wilcox joins us now to talk more about this accomplishment of biking around the world. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
WILCOX: Yeah, thanks for having me.
DETROW: One of the things I was going to ask you is you just finished biking around the world. How long are you to stay off the bike before you hop back on? And I think the answer is we actually caught you in the middle of a bike ride today.
WILCOX: Yeah. My folks came from Alaska to come see my finish, and they wanted to go for a bike ride on the waterfront in Chicago. And I thought, there’s nothing else I’d rather do.
DETROW: Yeah. How are you feeling about this accomplishment and how were you feeling when you called in and left us that note? How were you feeling on those final legs of this journey?
WILCOX: Oh, gosh, I think I’ve just been on a total high. From three days out from the finish, I just got this feeling like, I can do this, and I felt like I was flying. And I’m still kind of riding that wave. I just had so much fun out there, and it meant so much to me. And, you know, it also felt so good to be coming to the end of it.
DETROW: Let’s back up to the beginning, though. I’m curious, first of all, when you got really serious about cycling, when it went from a hobby to, no, this is something I’m going to dedicate myself to.
WILCOX: I started borrowing bikes when I was 20 just to get to work. I was working at a brewery 4 miles away. I’ve never owned a car, and I don’t drive. And before that, I’d just walk. But it was too far to really get there within a reasonable time. So I started borrowing a bike, getting to work, and then quickly moved from riding to work to all over the city and then visiting my sister in the next city over. And then I thought, oh, if I could ride to the next city, I could ride across the country.
So then I spent, like, the next seven years riding around the world, working odd jobs to pay for it. And towards the end of that stint, I entered my first race, an ultradistance race with my inexpensive bike and the gear I was using to travel. And that’s when it really clicked. That’s when I figured out it was something I loved and something I was good at. And I’ve just kind of gone from there.
DETROW: Yeah. So – and first of all, I just want to congratulate you among other accomplishments, you just said the most NPR sentence in the history of NPR on air about biking to your job at the brewery. Congratulations.
(LAUGHTER)
WILCOX: Yeah, that’s pretty great.
DETROW: This is a good time to pause and explain. You have been documenting this journey in a wide variety of ways, and people have been following it. But for people listening who haven’t followed, they might be thinking, wait a second – oceans. Can you just explain the logistics…
WILCOX: Totally.
DETROW: …Of how this counts, how you approach it? What goes into those logistics?
WILCOX: Right. So you have to piece it together because there are oceans, and there are borders that you can’t cross. And, you know, there are kind of limitations in a way. But there’s, like, a set of five rules or so to go after the Guinness World record. You have to ride a minimum of 18,000 miles. You have to ride either east or west. You have to cross two antipodal points – so if you took a spear through the globe, where it hits the two other sides. For me, that was Madrid, Spain, and Wellington, New Zealand. And then you have to take commercial transportation across the ocean or between start and end points. And you can’t really zigzag. You could go kind of backwards, five degrees. So that’s something like 300 miles, just because sometimes the roads aren’t just directly east or west.
DETROW: Your time on the road was documented by your wife who was by your side along the way. She was also part of your podcast where you documented nightly updates along your trip. Tell us about the role she played and why you decided it was so important to document this.
WILCOX: Well, at first, I decided I wanted to do this ride, and my wife is a professional photo journalist. But I didn’t want to pressure her to come in to do it. I knew it was going to take, like, 3 1/2 months, flat out, pretty exhausting endeavor. So at first, I was like, I’m just going to go and don’t worry about it. You don’t have to come. But for me, really, it’s that we got to have this life experience together. I mean, I think…
DETROW: Yeah.
WILCOX: …You know, it would be pretty sad for me to just do it alone, and she wouldn’t get to see all these beautiful places or meet all these people and be part of it. So I’m so, so grateful that we got this chance.
DETROW: That gets to the last thing I wanted to ask you about. We mentioned before – we were talking about Guinness and records and things like that. You wrote out what your goals were for this attempt at the beginning, and I’m wondering if you could read one section of your mission statement as it was.
WILCOX: Absolutely. So I’ve got it pulled up here. It says, (reading) Guinness does not distinguish between supported and unsupported rides. I want to invite people living near the route to ride with me. I’m not just riding through places but also people’s lives.
DETROW: Can you tell us what you meant by that?
WILCOX: I had an open invite for people to come and ride any section of it they wanted with me or even just come out to the roadside and cheer or, you know, be part of it in some way. And I had thousands of people come out. It was so awesome. You know, I’d be through a super remote stretch like British Columbia where, you know, there’s maybe a gas station every 150 miles, and there’s nobody out there. I saw, like, eight bears.
And then I get closer to a town and all of a sudden people start showing up, you know, a family with two kids and another guy that brought me a pastry and a nurse coming out in her full scrubs with the stethoscope just to say hello or a construction guy that knew I was riding. So sometimes I wouldn’t know if they were there for me or if they were just there doing their own thing. And there was kind of, like, a cross section of that. It was so cool.
DETROW: Yeah.
WILCOX: It just made me so excited and so awesome to have that as part of my trip.
DETROW: That was Lael Wilcox, just wrapped up a trip cycling around the world in 108 days. You can hear more about her adventure on the podcast “Lael Rides Around The World.” Thank you so much for joining us, and I guess we can let you get back to your current bike ride.
WILCOX: Yeah, awesome. Thanks so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)